s: anything might happen. "We will ride," he said.

Morano's breakfast was as good as ever; and, when he had packed up
those few belongings that make a dwelling-place of any chance spot in
the wilderness, they mounted the horses, which were surely there, and
rode away through sunlight and green leaves. They rode slow, for the
branches were low over the path, and whoever canters in a forest and
closes his eyes against a branch has to consider whether he will open
them to be whipped by the next branch or close them till he bumps his
head into a tree. And it suited Rodriguez to loiter, for he thought
thus to meet the King of Shadow Valley again or his green bowmen and
learn the answers to innumerable questions about his castle which were
wandering through his mind.

They ate and slept at noon in the forest's glittering greenness.

They passed afterwards by the old house in the wood, in which the
bowmen feasted, for they followed the track that they had taken before.
They knocked loud on the door as they passed but the house was empty.
They heard the sound of a multitude felling trees, but whenever they
approached the sound of chopping ceased. Again and again they left the
track and rode towards the sound of chopping, and every time the
chopping died away just as they drew close. They saw many a tree half
felled, but never a green bowman. And at last they left it as one of
the wonders of the forest and returned to the track lest they lose it,
for the track was more important to them than curiosity, and evening
had come and was filling the forest with dimness, and shadows stealing
across the track were beginning to hide it away. In the distance they
heard the invisible woodmen chopping.

And then they camped again and lit their fire; and night came down and
the two wanderers slept.

The nightingale sang until he woke the cuckoo: and the cuckoo filled
the leafy air so full of his two limpid notes that the dreams of
Rodriguez heard them and went away, back over their border to
dreamland. Rodriguez awoke Morano, who lit his fire: and soon they had
struck their camp and were riding on.

By noon they saw that if they hurried on they could come to Lowlight by
nightfall. But this was not Rodriguez' plan, for he had planned to ride
into Lowlight, as he had done once before, at the hour when Serafina
sat in her balcony in the cool of the evening, as Spanish ladies in
those days sometimes did. So they tarried long by their resti